I'm currently putting together the syllabus for my NYU Masters course this Fall, entitled "Topics in Digital Media: Visions and Revisions of Cyberspace." Usually when I teach a class like this, I tell a story on a timeline, painting cyberculture as an evolving entity. This time, however, I'm thinking about it in terms of subject areas, in which each week traces the past, present and future of a given meme or concept. My tentative list of 10 concepts/subject areas is as follows:
1: The Memex and the Mushroom Cloud 2: The Metaverse 3: Hackers and Gamers 4: OSS/FS/CC 5: dot-com Fantasies 6: Web 2.0 7: Remix/Configurable Culture 8: The Cloud 9: Surveillance, Sensors and Robots 10: Adventures in MeatSpace
I'd love any and all informed feedback on either (a) subjects I need to add, delete or merge, and (b) vital readings/viewings/playings for a given subject. Email or blog comments will do. Thanks!
Some really creative folks in Germany used a high-definition digital projector to produce amazing trompe l'oeil effects on the side of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The animation takes its cue from the gridlike pattern on the face of the building, and builds from there.
There seems to be little question that thought-reading machines -- once the exclusive province of science fiction -- are now becoming a viable technology. Although the concept immediately calls up the worst imaginable dystopian nightmares of ultra-Orwellian, networked global mind surveillance for some of us, the press has mostly covered the technology with a "gee-whiz, what won't they think of next" angle. News stories primarily consist of feel-good tales of paraplegics remotely controlling computer cursors and digital prostheses, and torture-free detention centers where the awful truth is sucked painlessly from the minds of terrorism suspects.
But there's something even more deeply unsettling about the new edge of banality creeping into these fantasies. According to the latest version of the story, these amazing new technologies will allow us to change the volume or channel of our TV sets without us having to exert all of the energy it takes to hit a remote control with our thumbs.
Really? That's it? You create a helmet that reads thoughts, and sell it as a souped up TV-remote-skullcap? What's next, a time machine you can use to find a parking space during street-cleaning hour?
These days, I'm loving this little iPhone app called RjDj. It takes the audio from your earphone mic, routs it through a bunch of DSPs (sonic warping technologies), and feeds them back into your earphones in real time. I love to sit on the bus or the subway, and instead of listening to music, just listen to the sounds around me remixed, reverbed and reconfigured.
As the RjDj site explains, in less than subtle fashion:
The listening experience of RjDj is similar to the effects of drugs. Drugs affect our sensory perception, so does RjDj. RjDj is a digital drug which causes mind twisting hearing sensation.
Ok, so the same could be said about music, but still, I appreciate the sentiment.
I love this project by MIT Media Lab grad student David Merrill. They're computerized, self-aware, socially-aware, manipulable blocks. Depending on the software you run through them, they can be an audio sequencer, an interactive storybook, a spreadsheet, or a visual art program.
Can't wait to see what Nintendo does with this technology in 10 years!
So now that my dream of MVNO-fueled independence from the telco cartel has vanished like a dragon scale in daylight, I'm ready to ditch Virgin Helio and the godawful Ocean (no disrespect to my friend who designed its interface, it's just superbuggy and the hardware is made of tinkertoys).
One option would be to suck it up and buy an iPhone 3G, but I have many objections I don't need to get into here -- suffice to say I'd rather not do business with AT&T or live in Apple's perfect little jail.
Another option I'm considering is Openmoko, the open-source, Linux-based touchscreen, GPS-enabled mobile communications device. At $399, it's a pricey gamble, but it would be worth it if it lives up to its promise. However, I've got a few questions before I can take the plunge, and I'm having difficulty finding
answers on the the Openmoko wiki. Maybe some of the smart people who read this blog on occasion can weigh in with their help.
First of all, I know the phone comes in a US-flavored GSM tri-band version, which is fine. T-Mobile supports the right GSM format, but they don't have any voice/data plans other than Blackberry. Would I need to pay a carrier for a voice/data plan in order to take advantage of Openmoko's data services? Or is simple GSM connectivity enough? If the former, what carrier/plan makes the most sense? I'm really kind of confused.
Second, this is a Linux-based phone, and I don't know Linux. That's right, I'm a fake nerd. Anyway, would I have to install the mobile software, and manage my device, from a Linux box, or can I use my MacBook Pro? (Yes, i know I slagged Apple above, but the MBP is a little more open than the iPhone -- for instance, I can actually install support for the tens of thousands of WMA files I have on my home media server). Even more importantly, would I have to know Linux to use the phone? Does the free software available for it come in easy-to-use installer pac
kages, or would I have to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of Linux command-line interfaces before I could move that Pac-Man clone to my phone?
I appreciate any and all responses, ASAP!
UPDATE: I could also just wait a month or two or three (with a broken Ocean) for the Android-powered HTC Dream (see video below). Decisions, decisions.
Those jokers over at Google are advertising a new calendar-based "wake-up kit" that includes a bucket of water and a bed-flipping device. Pretty lame as an April Fool's joke, but it does accurately reflect Google's ambition to expand beyond the desktop...
The "wake up" notification uses several progressively more annoying alerts
to wake you up. First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails,
more coercive means will be used. The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket
and is designed to be connected to your water main for automatic filling. In
addition, a bed-flipping device is included for forceful removal from your
sleeping quarters.
People who know me know that I love stuff like this: creepy sci-fi technologies seeping almost without comment into our quotidian world. A company called Emotiv has just announced it will be shipping thought-control (and emotion-reading) interfaces, mass marketed to video gamers, later this year. Of course, this stuff has been around for a while -- mostly, DARPA-funded projects whose ostensible purpose is to help paraplegics move a mouse cursor, but of course the real agenda is more like Firefox (not the browser -- the Clint Eastwood movie) -- thought-controlled weaponry to nudge our soldiers ever closer to maximal killing efficiency and an Ender's Game-like remove from the visceral experience of taking life. But, to my knowledge, this is the first time such technology will be available at BestBuy.
Of course, as I've been arguing for years, this tech is half of the necessary infrastructure for networked telepathy (the other half has also been built -- someone just has to put the two pieces together), or, if you want to get really sinister about it, networked thought control.
To put on my analyst's hat for a second: imagine the data mining possibilities this thing will have! McDonald's will actually be able to target action-oriented marketing (buy a Big Mac right now, for 99 cents!!!) based on the real time emotional state of media consumers. Whoa. I've got to bake that into my SEMPO projections.
Now, to put on my video game professor's hat: imagine the feedback effect the adoption of technologies like this would have on game design. Once designers can count on collecting and delivering data through such an interface, it could significantly change gameplay; levels could become faster or harder depending on the level of stress the user exhibits (certain biofeedback games already do this, in a way), or enterprising designers could use the device to break the 4th wall. Imagine Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid taunting you -- not with "his" psychic knowledge of the games you've got stored on your memory card, but based on "his" real-time assessment of your emotional state. [Shudder].
hmmm....i'll believe it when/if it works... at this point, it is all very functional and doesn't work very well, at least what i've seen. it is all based on mapping electrical signals AFAIK. neuroscience/brain imaging scares the shit out of me b/c so many people want to believe its possible (and have a vested interest in making it appear possible) that the technology is being sold as being able to do more than it can. you've seen the stories CNN has done where they're using fMRIs on people to show their "real" voting preferences? it's batshit crazy to say that one is true (the scan) over the other (the person's articulated preference). at best you can say that they're in conflict. but once CNN (or Wired or anyone who can make money off overblowing claims) gets a hold of it, they start making fMRIs say more than they do.
i've been thinking a lot about Eugene Thacker's biomedia argument- what you get is not someone's thoughts, but a machinic interpretation of them, mediated by a computer program that is designed to interpret signals in a particular way. it is IMO not any different from what was going on in the 19th C when they were measuring fatigue and inferring neurasthenia based on slow reaction time, declining tactual acuity, etc.
Recent Comments